About Me (way too much)
In 1985 I moved to
Arlington,
Texas from
Ann
Arbor, Michigan. I lived there for 20 years but after such a
long time decided I no longer wanted to live in Texas. Texas was
definitely an adventure but I seriously began to miss the distinct
change of season, huge trees, multitude of natural lakes and lush
green beauty of home.
So one day about three years ago I decided it was time to make a
move, a very big move. My first thought was to pack it in and move
south to Austin, the capital of Texas but the thought of intense
heat even worse than that of Dallas/Fort Worth made me look to the
north. Now I know what many of you are thinking. Why on earth would
you leave a place that has such mild winters to go back up to
Michigan? Well, for me that's easy. I'm sick and tired of winters
that amount to nothing but bland lows of 35-45 degrees and highs of
55. I like snow and I didn't leave Michigan because of it in the
first place. On the flip side, the things I miss the most are my
mom, relatives and Tex-Mex food. I love Mexican food and you just
can't get it in Michigan. If you want it, you've got to make it
yourself or go without.
My first choice was my hometown of Ann Arbor. I was born and raised
there graduating from
Community High School in 1984. I attended
WCC for one year and then moved
to Texas in June 1985. From there I got a job, lived on my own, got
promoted, got married, had a baby, got divorced, went back to
school, ex-husband died, received associates' degree in computer
networking and realized the only reason I had stuck around Texas as
long as I had was because of shared custody, and now that shared
custody was no longer an issue, I could move. So I packed up my
daughter and we did so.
It took about a year of looking to narrow down the right city. Of
course, I wanted to return to Ann Arbor but after seeing what houses
cost I widened my search. I wanted to buy a house outright and not
have to carry a mortgage. My mom and aunt kept telling me 'you can
never go home' meaning I can't expect it to be the city I left and
they were right. I will always love Ann Arbor but it has changed so
much in 20+ years and while some of the changes are good, far more
of the changes I think,
suck. Main
street is one big sidewalk restaurant which is just fine if you're
hungry, but the off-beat retailers, small co-ops, art studios,
street
buskers
and bookstores hardly exist there anymore because they can't afford
the rents. So what you end up with are the
big-box food
franchises and bookstores. Taxes in Ann Arbor are terrible as well
and you find that many people who have lived there for years are
renters, not owners which adds to the transient nature and idea that
nobody can put down stakes unless they are independently wealthy or
willing to live in a totally crappy hovel. It's too bad but because
of this negative stuff it hasn't bothered me so much to not live
there. I guess you can never really go back. However, if I had
enough money to buy something in Ann Arbor, I'd move to Boston or
Baltimore. ; )
I still have a sister that lives in Michigan and we were always very
close. She has two teenagers that I hardly know because they grew up
1200 miles away from me and I thought it would be nice to get to
know them better.
I looked at
Monroe (located in SE Michigan on the shores of Lake Erie).
Monroe looked very nice but it was almost an hour from my sister who
lives in Manchester and it was simply too far.
Milan,
Chelsea
and Manchester were all too expensive too (being bedroom communities
to Ann Arbor). I also had certain criteria that had to be met
in order for me to want to live in the city. I'll get to this
in a second. First let me tell you about the place I left.
Arlington, Texas. Population: 330,000. It's a huge city sitting
between Dallas and Fort Worth (a.k.a. the D/FW Metroplex), so you'd
think there is great public transit, plenty of sidewalks, parks,
etc. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Everything is a good drive away from you.
That's right, if you want to get there, you must get in your car or
truck and drive. Now, I'm not saying everything is too far
away to walk to, but there is very little sense of connectedness.
Although there is an old downtown, Arlington has expanded so
rapidly, sprawl is all you have. Big malls, mini-malls, strip malls,
the miscellaneous scatterings of fast-food restaurants. In many
instances, over the decades, you find abandoned mega-malls. Because
once one area builds a big mall, small businesses and the big mall
'corner-blocks' flock to it. Sears, Penney's, Dillard's, Bon-Ton,
etc. Restaurants crop up, a movie theatre appears. Then, 7 years
later, everybody packs up and leaves because a new developer has
constructed another mega-mall 5 (or less) miles away. The old mall
then falls into ruin and the theatre and restaurants disappear.
It might later be inhabited by numerous $1 stores and indoor flea
markets. Essentially what you are left with is a ghost-town,
tattered hulls of commerce that used to exist. Home Depot,
Toys-R-Us, Best Buy all abandon their digs for prime sites nearer
the new mall which is now causing a cluster-f*ck of traffic and
aggressive humanity. I know I sound bitter but it seems city
planners could have done so much better; But I'm sure there are too
many of these officials making $$$ off the sale of property that
they knew would be worth something in a few years. To top it off,
when a new street or road is built, or one is widened, they don't
even add sidewalks and if they do, it is only on one side of the
street. When this is the case, pedestrians and bike riders create
what are called pig-paths; ruts in the ground between two-foot high
weeds and litter that they are forced to trudge through if they
don't wish to be run over by speeding vehicles. Also, there is no
bottle or can deposit in the state of Texas. There as been one in
Michigan for 30 years or more. This greatly reduces the amount of
bottles and cans you see on the sides of roads. And, now
former Governor
Granholm was working on legislation to get a deposit of some sort
put on plastic water bottles. Excellent idea but I guess
nothing ever came of it.
I sometimes wonder why I settled for Arlington when I could have
gone further south to
Austin and
had many of the amenities that were also found in Ann Arbor but I
think it is because all I could think about was survival which meant
getting a job and a place to live and by the time I accomplished
this and made friends, I didn't want to leave.
On with city hunting. My mom is the one who brought up
Jackson,
Michigan. I had been to Jackson a couple of times before I moved
from Ann Arbor. Once was to go with a friend to see some of his
relatives and it wasn't in a good part of town but I remember
thinking how much I loved the old house they lived in. The
other time I went was to a camera equipment swap meet and I got an
awesome 1960's American flag camera strap. Remember those?
Anyway, Jackson's claim to fame is the inner-city walled prison that
was erected in the mid-1800's. It was the largest walled prison in
the United States (oh goody). Another claim to fame is they are the
birthplace of the Republican party (back when the party's ideals
were today's equivalent of the Democratic party, let's not
forget). There are other cities that claim the same thing and I say,
take it, it's yours. The first Republican convention was held in
Jackson, Michigan. Jackson needs a new moniker that means something
to the city and has a positive draw. In my sisters city,
Manchester, they are the 'Home
of the Chicken Broil' and all the cities around know and enjoy
the chicken broil. This is precisely what Jackson needs.
I have always dreamed of living in an old house with woodwork and
wood floors and high ceilings. In areas that are newer (such as
Arlington) chances are you aren't going to find an old house like
this (they do exist but they are far and few between). Arlington has
many cool homes that were built in the 40's, 50's and 60's. Both my
mom and aunt have these types of houses but I wanted something
older, like the houses I used to dream about having when I was a
kid.
My research for Jackson had begun. I was truly amazed. Beautiful old
houses selling for almost nothing. I knew there had to be a hitch
but what was it? I posted in a newsgroup in the
Jackson Citizen Patriot
and asked locals about neighborhoods. I was told anything to the
east of 1st street is bad and that anything with a man's name is bad
news. That explained many of the super-cheap price tags but still,
overall, the houses are very reasonably priced and the taxes are
fair. On top of the reasonable prices there needed to be public
transit, plenty of parks and things to do. My requirements for a
house were simple: within walking distance to many stores, public
transit, close to a major highway, cheap, old, must have a yard and
it's own driveway. I knew whatever I got would be a fixer-upper but
that was fine with me as long as I could pay for it in full. Jackson
had all of this and so much more. My aunt and I made a couple of
trips to Jackson in early 2005 to scout neighborhoods. Some of the
neighborhoods I was told to avoid weren't near as bad as what I
thought they'd be. I mean, in Texas, in areas that are bad, you see
window bars everywhere and cars parked all over the yards. In
Jackson it isn't so. But I'm not just going to paint a rosy picture
of Jackson either. There is too much crime (most bad things
happening around 2AM in bad neighborhoods) which needs to be
addressed. Also, too many of the homes are rentals and there isn't
enough ownership (these are those bad neighborhoods). There are
entire neighborhoods full of houses that have been converted into
multiple units which wouldn't be so bad if it were the owner of the
house living in one of them and the houses were in good shape.
But they are owned by investors who could care less about
appearance, etc. and these places rent cheap and are inhabited by a
nomadic rental crowd loaded with n'er do wells. I think the
city should stand on the necks of these slum-lords to bring the
homes up to code and give special incentives to folks who wish to
buy homes here and live in them. This is why I feel Jackson should
campaign to bring people from the East and West of us to take
advantage of lower taxes and affordable houses and get some positive
people in here. Even in the worst parts there are no bars on
windows. Don't ask me why because if I lived in a place where the
chances of something bad happening were probable, I'd have my
windows barred. I guess I just got used to living in a very big city
and that's the way it was there. In May 2005 I put a bid on a big
old Folk Victorian-style house. It needs tons of work but it sits in
a terrific area of the city. My bid was accepted and I closed on the
house in June 2005 and was fully moved-in by the end of August 2005.
Jackson does have a lot of positive things going for it and it is in the middle of an urban renewal. A huge investment of about 70 million dollars in an Armory Arts Project and Grand River Arts Walk located at the site of the now historical landmark inner-city State Prison should have a positive draw (and it's only about 10 blocks from our house!). Many groups have become active in rebuilding the downtown area and the area along the Grand River (unfortunately, it's really just a big creek by the time it goes through Jackson, but hey whatcha gonna do?) or areas that connect to downtown like the Falling Water Trail. I hope the momentum continues and we end up with a city we walk and ride bikes in to get to the places we want to be and enjoy the outdoors while we're at it. If I had millions, I'd give a good portion to Jackson to help build interest in this already cool city.